Sharkey was the elusive second-in-command of Ben Travers’s small inner circle. As unpleasant as his late leader, but without the latter’s native authority, Sharkey’s compensating manipulativeness had made him a natural suspect as Ben’s killer in Brandt’s eyes. To me, that very same trait was why I thought him incapable of such boldness.
In any case, he’d become scarce following a brief preliminary interview with Ron, conducted right after Benny’s body had been identified.
Downtown Main Street, with only a few exceptions, consists of a double row of nineteenth-century, red-brick buildings-squat, grimy, determinately permanent, and for all that, distinctly statuesque. Having survived well over a century, these stolid, functional monuments to a long-past industrial era had finally acquired the kind of patina bestowed on certain elder statesmen.
But like a celebrity’s fame, the impression disguised reality. The Hooker-Dunham Block, almost directly across from an incongruously dinky Dunkin’ Donuts shop, was a typical result of the renovator’s art-it was an undistinguished, albeit practical, maze of apartments, offices, shops, hallways, and even a small theater. Its innards had been chopped up and changed so often since its glory days that it was anyone’s guess how many rooms, complete with inhabitants, might have been accidentally sealed off forever.
The row of buildings lined the entire east side of the street, and cut off a potentially beautiful view of the Connecticut River and the New Hampshire hills lying just beyond. As a result, that abandoned strip of shoreline had been left to the railroad track, the garbage barrels, a few haphazardly parked cars, and a veritable jungle of tall, scraggly weeds-a prime hangout for the drunk, the dispossessed, and those just wanting to be left alone.
It all spoke richly of Brattleboro as a whole, and went far to explain why many people found the town appealingly unique. Neither left to decay in economic depression nor totally gutted and replaced by urban renewalists hell-bent on the latest architectural kick, Brattleboro had thrashed and battled its way up the food chain like a born survivor, making do with what it had, creating citizens of whoever was willing to stake a claim, and establishing itself as an outspoken, politicized, often contradictory place to live. Old and new, rich and poor, native and fIatlander-and, most pointedly, right wing and left-all existed in a jostling, noisy harmony that baffled outsiders and imbued residents with a begrudging sort of pride.
Stennis had told me to find him in some offices at the back of the building, on the Main Street level, which put them about three flights above the train tracks. He met me in the reception area and guided me down a rear corridor. “We’re going to Mary Cappuce’s office. She’s got a front-row seat from her window,” he explained, as if he were making sense.
Mary Cappuce seemed nonplussed to see us, giving us a small wave of the hand before returning to her computer. Stennis parked himself to one side of a large, open window that did have a commanding view of the grubby, cluttered scene below. Like crows from a rooftop, we could consider our pickings at leisure. Unfortunately, I was still a little vague on what those pickings were supposed to be.
“See that big bush down there, between the tracks and the riverbank, just to the far side of the utility pole?” Stennis asked, pointing.
“Yes.”
“There’s a narrow path to the far side of it-leads down to the water’s edge. It’s a favorite hangout for dope smokers.”
Mary’s voice floated up behind us. “When the wind’s right, I feel like I’m having flashbacks.”
I smiled and shook my head-small-town police procedure at work. “And that’s where he’s hanging out?” I asked Sol.
“Tracked him there not fifteen minutes ago.”
“He alone?”
Stennis looked a little less confident. “That I don’t know. There’s no clear view of the actual river edge-part of its appeal. I thought you might want to go down and talk to him, while I guarded the rear.” He pointed a little farther down the tracks, where even I could see a faint worn path cutting through the grass. “Just in case he’s not in a chatty mood.”
Battle plans drawn, I nodded my agreement, thanked Mary for her hospitality, and led the way back outside.
We descended a variety of cement, wooden, and metal stairs until we reached the bottom of the building’s downhill side, and emerged from a service entrance among trash cans and debris. Across the double row of railroad tracks, the weeds and brush looked impenetrably dense, and much taller than they had from above.
We split up and approached the jungle from different angles; I headed for the far side of the huge bush Stennis had pointed out earlier. Just before I took the path behind it, I glanced up at the window we’d been using and saw five women clustered around Mary, eagerly watching the proceedings. I hoped they’d be in for a dull time.
While the day was not at all hot, it felt close and uncomfortably warm amid the dry, dusty, dense vegetation, a sensation no doubt enhanced by not knowing what lay even a few feet ahead of me. I moved slowly down the steep embankment, and as quietly as possible, so that by the time I emerged along a narrow strip of trampled grass lining the water and decorated with a few wooden boxes to sit on, I caught four young men sprawled out on the ground completely by surprise. The joint they’d been smoking flew into the water as they all made a mad scramble up the path Stennis was blocking.
They didn’t even make it to the bushes. As the first of them was about to vanish, Stennis magically appeared, planting his hand against the first one’s chest.
I pointed a finger at Sharkey, the last one in line. “You stay. The rest can go.”
The first three sheepishly hurried past the cheerful-looking Stennis, who’d stepped aside to let them by. Vince Sharkey was left staring sullenly at the ground.
“I’ll give you two a little privacy,” Stennis said affably, and followed the others back to the railroad tracks.
“You gonna bust me?” Sharkey demanded, folding his arms across his chest in an effort to inflate his size. He was more fat than muscular, but big nevertheless, with the prominent brow and single-line thick eyebrows that caricaturists routinely place on dim-witted bullies.
Vince Sharkey was not the kind of kid I liked. The product of as poor a home as any of them, he’d shown no interest in taking any road other than the one he’d pursued from the time he could walk. A natural troublemaker, he’d forever made the people who’d tried to help him rue their efforts, and had made it a point to screw up every decent opportunity offered him. While by instinct no bleeding heart, I did understand why a good number of our younger customers had become the way they were, and despite our being on opposite sides of the law, I’d even developed a grudging benevolence for some of them, like Sally and the Beauprés. But Vince was not one of those, and I knew for a certainty that he’d end up either killed or doing hard time before too many more years went by. He had long ago worn out his welcome with me.
I pointed to a box by his side. “Sit.”
He hesitated, pondering whether to give me a hard time, but he, again unlike the lately departed Ben Travers, was no natural leader. He sat.
“Tell me how Benny died.”
“There’s nothin’ to tell. I didn’t know what happened to him till after. I hadn’t seen Benny for days.”
“Was that the way it was supposed to go down?”
He looked at me sharply, alarmed, which lent me confidence that I was on the right track. “What’s that mean?” he asked, about a full count too late for believability.
I picked a time and date at random. “What were you doing around two o’clock the day before yesterday?”
His face registered total bafflement. “How the hell do I know?”
“You don’t remember?”
He shook his head, his confusion deepening. “What’s to remember?”